Real Estate Services Looking, Staying, Leaving

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/ar9Fk)
The following are situations to help you determine how to find your next property or work with your existing property.  If you are looking to rent with first month's rent and a deposit.  I know sometimes people want to try to do a rent-to-own if they have some option money and I understand that.  The question is often asked if a contract-for-deed is possible and with a down payment of about $7500 or so it is a possibility.   I will tell you that based on people's situation I talk to from the past, it's likely that they have had a foreclosure or a bankruptcy in many cases.

Because of this I'd highly recommend a credit repair service because most things can be removed off of your credit and the truth is having a higher credit score is really what you are looking for later on to get financing on that rent to own or contract for deed property that the owner is financing today.  Don't worry if your credit score is really low, even in the 400's, you'd be surprised what's possible these days.  For example I just saw someone go from a 520 to 638 in 60+ days of credit repair.  Of course that's a pretty good-case scenario, but the reason I bring it up is I run into so many people who think they have to wait 7 years to get a house again, and they just stop thinking of home ownership.

The truth is that you can get home-loan financing within 3 years from a foreclosure, short sale, deed-in-lieu or whatever may have happened to you.  Some of you didn't have a foreclosure but rather a bankruptcy, well the way bankruptcy works on getting your next home loan is that you would need to wait 12 months into a Chapter 13 bankruptcy and 24 months from Chapter 7 discharge.  I run into people a lot that think that staying may be a better option than actually getting another place, and if your credit is good then a refinance may be your best option. I do find that a lot of people owe a little too much on their home, so really depending on where they are as it relates to payments, if they are falling behind on payments they may want to try a short-refi which does have a principle reduction with qualifying for different loan terms.

If you get into foreclosure and you insist on staying you may end up needing assistance with your bank on a loan-modification.  If you decide along the way that you need any help with home repairs whether you are staying or leaving, I know of some people that do home-repairs.  If you decide you don't want to stay in the house, or that you just can't make it work with your bank, your option and decision may have you selling your house.  In the case of selling, you will find yourself with many options, at first they may seem confusing, but let me go over them one by one.  You will need to determine if you have equity in the house, if the payment will be affordable for the long-term, and if you are current or behind on payments.  Those three factors are all very important in the decision making process.  So if you have a little equity, and a reasonable payment for awhile, meaning no ARM's adjusting to be too much anytime soon, you may want to offer owner financing to a prospective tenant or buyer.  You can rent-out your place there are renter placement services that can help and if you don't want to be a landlord than there are property management companies that, for a small monthly fee, can manage just about everything from the contractor calls, collecting rents, possibly even the accounting.  Sometimes if you offer your house for sale on a rent-to-own, where you give the buyer a locked-in price, it's possible to get a better tenant and a little more money upfront.  You could even sell on a contract-for-deed, which is selling the house, where that buyer would hope to refinance the house in as little as 12 months in many cases.

Before I had mentioned that it's important to know if you were upside down or don't have equity in the house.  If you owe too much after you figure out both mortgages, new home values, the cost to list with an agent, and any vacancy and time left on the market, it may make sense to sell on a short sale. Selling on a short sale works best if you get started earlier in the process, and if you wait until there is less than 4 months left in redemption, it's going to be tough to get a short sale done due to the lack of time to negotiate and market the property. At the point when you are past the sheriff sale with a few months left, you have a couple of options.  If your house sold for really cheap at the sheriff sale, meaning that there was a low bid, you could sell over the low-bid amount. If you find that it didn't have a low bid, you are over-financed and time has run out, there is an option even up until 3 days before the end of the redemption period. I know people that will pay you for your house and deed if you ever do decide to just walk-wway.

If you have equity in your house, you can always sell and list your house with a real estate agent, and I work with many that can help with that.  Working on your credit right now or needing to get rid of your house due to your payment or lack of equity, could just be the result of the unfortunate situations that happened in your life. I do see them ever day, they are understandable and more common than you think.  One of the top reasons is because of health issues and large medical bills, which has caused collections, charge-offs, or possibly even judgments in your name, or on your credit report, which may have got you for wage-garnishment in the past.  Family situations often can creep up at unexpected times.

Think about all the family situations that can come at the wrong time.  There is divorce, back child support, and sometimes there is an unfortunate death in the family, where someone may have unexpectedly inherited a house, and they have to go through probate or an estate sale, and attorney's bills will be quite large.  Sometimes jobs don't work out in life like we'd hoped.  A simple job transfer having us move out of state, a job loss ourselves, or a spouse's losing his/her job.  Also unemployment isn't always easy to get and sometimes when you do get it, it runs out and ends. Anything can hold people back from really getting a place, tax liens from the past, repossessed cars, or just simply writing a few bad checks, or having worked with some tenants that didn't pay you.  Whichever situation you find yourself in, trust that I have an affiliate that I work with every week that works with people in all situations.  Please email me ron@minnesotainvestors.com or you can visit my website for more information http://www.ronorr.com. I am a real estate broker and have been around the business since 2002, so let me know how I can help.

Thanks,

Sincerely,

Ron Orr, Jr.